Siegfried Line campaign

The Siegfried Line campaign (25 August 1944-7 March 1945) was a campaign of World War II that occurred as the Allied armies advanced from Paris to the Rhine River in the aftermath of the Liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944. The Allied advance was rapid, but it eventually ground to a halt due to supply line problems and ferocious German resistance, especially during the Battle of the Bulge; the Allies finally reached the Rhine on 7 March 1945.

Start of the advance
On 21 August 1944, Dwight D. Eisenhower held a meeting at his Advanced HQ in Normandy, where he announced that he was taking personal control of the ground forces from 1 September and gave instructions that Omar Bradley's US 12th Army Group was to aim for the France-Germany border, while Bernard Montgomery's 21st Army Group advanced into Belgium. Montgomery argued that the Allies should concentrate on a single thrust to the Ruhr, Germany's main industrial region in the west, but Eisenhower was adamant that his "broad front" strategy should prevail. By 29 August, the Allies had reached the Seine River, but George S. Patton's US Third Army was far ahead of them; he had already reached the Marne. While the Canadians advanced along the English Channel coast to secure its ports, the British Second Army launched a lightning thrust, with the US First Army covering its right flank, and the two armies reached the Belgian border on 2 September. By this time, Patton had crossed the Marne and was heading for the Meuse River.

Liberation of Belgium
The Allied advance was slowed by supply difficulties, however, as the Allied armies were still being supplied from Cherbourg, and their supply lines were becoming dangerously overstretched as they advanced. The railroads were too badly damaged to be used, and supply planes had been allocated to the airborne forces. Every available truck was pressed into service, but these trucks consumed an increasingly high amount of fuel as the Allied armies moved the front lines forwards. The Canadians were unable to capture the Channel ports quickly because Adolf Hitler had declared them festungen (meaning that their garrisons had to fight to the death), and the dock facilities of those they did liberate had been largely destroyed by their defenders, rendering them useless. Montgomery decided to capture the vital Belgian port of Antwerp to solve the supply problem, and his tanks achieved the liberation of Antwerp on 4 September 1944, the day after the Belgian capital of Brussels had been liberated. The Germans had no time to sabotage the docks, as they had been taken by surprise. However, the Germans controlled the Scheldt River, rendering the port useless, as its only connection to the sea was in enemy hands. Montgomery ignored the issue and focused on advancing east into Germany rather than securing his supply lines, and Allied fuel tanks were almost dry by the end of the first week of September, halting the Allied advance. The Germans were able to regroup in the meantime, and Montgomery decided to conceive an ambitious plan for maintaining the momentum and ending the war in 1944.

Operation Market Garden
Montgomery proposed that airborne troups should seize bridges over the Lower Rhine and other rivers in the southern Netherlands, which would allow for ground forces to advance rapidly into Germany. Eisenhower sanctioned the plan on 10 September, and the plan, Operation Market Garden, was executed a week later. The US 101st Airborne Division was to be dropped around Eindhoven, the US 82nd Airborne Division around Grave, and the British 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem. At the same time, the British XXX Corps was to advance north to reach Eindhoven in two to three hours and Arnhem in two to three days, thereby relieving the airborne divisions in turn. However, the British paratroops were dropped 6 miles from the bridge in Arnhem, and they faced two SS panzer divisions requipping in the area. A US officer was captured with a copy of the operational orders, giving up the Allied plans, and the XXX Corps' advance was slowed down by narrow roads and traffic congestion. The British XXX Corps was able to link up with the US divisions, but they were unable to reach Arnhem. The British paratroops, reinforced by the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade, were subjected to relentless pressure by the two SS divisions and were forced to surrender, with only a fifth of their number escaping back to Allied lines. The chance to end the war in 1944 was lost.

Attacking the Siegfried Line
In the American sector, General Courtney Hodges' US First Army began to penetrate the Siegfried Line, while Patton's Third Army reached the Moselle and linked up with the US Seventh Army and the First French Army, united under Jacob L. Devers' US 6th Army Group. The Germans began recovering everywhere as the Allies began to only achieve a step-by-step advance, and the Canadian First Army concurrently struggled to take the Channel ports; Dunkirk would continue resistance until the end of the war. Montgomery ordered the Canadians to clear the Scheldt estuary so that Antwerp could be opened, and the British Second Army set about enlarging the salient into the Netherlands that had been created by Market Garden.

In mid-October 1944, Eisenhower issued new orders, instructing Montgomery to continue to clear the Scheldt and, once Antwerp had been opened, advance from the Maas to the Rhine. Bradley was to advance to the Rhine at Cologne, while Devers would close up to the Rhine via the Belfort gap. The Americans advancing toward Cologne found themselves involved in tough fighting as they secured the first German town of any significance, Aachen, and then at the Battle of Huertgen Forest. In the south, Patton reached the Saar River, and Devers reached the Rhine, entrapping German defenders in the tough Colmar Pocket. In the north, the Canadians continued to clear both sides of the Scheldt, landing at Walcheren on 1 November 1944 and securing the island a week later. The river was then swept of mines, and the first supply ships entered the port of Antwerp on 26 November 1944, easing the supply situation.

Battle of the Bulge
While these grim fall battles were being fought, Hitler was secretly preparing to mount a major counteroffensive. Divisions were withdrawn from the line and reequipped, and Hitler planned to attack through the Ardennes, with his ultimate objective being Antwerp. In this way, he hoped to split the British 21st Army Group from the Americans, and the capture of Antwerp would deprive the Allies of supplies once more. Although his generals were not optimistic, Hitler was determined that the offensive should go ahead in mid-December.

Hitler's counteroffensive in the west, "Operation Wacht am Rhein", was spearheaded by Sepp Dietrich's 6th Panzer Army (consisting largely of SS divisions) in the north and Hasso von Manteuffel's 5th Panzer Army in the south. Manteuffel's southern flank would be protected by Erich Brandenberger's German 7th Army. Facing them in the Ardennes were elements of the US First Army, which was guarding a quiet sector with formations either recovering from the bitter fighting in the Huertgen Forest or fresh from the USA. The Allies did not believe intelligence indicators that the Germans were capable of mounting a major offensive in the hilly and wooded Ardennes in winter, and they were gravely mistaken.

On 16 December 1944, after a sharp predawn artillery barrage and in thick fog which grounded Allied airpower, the Germans opened their offensive. In the north, the narrow winding roads slowed their advance, but one armored battle group managed to break through the Aerican lines and began to head for bridges over the Meuse. Manteuffel had more favorable terrain and made better progress, with some German infiltrators dressed in US uniforms changing signposts around to cause much confusion in the US Army; the Americans confined Eisenhower in his Versailles headquarters for fear that he might be assassinated. Many US units were overrun and forced to surrender or caught while on the move, and it was not until the afternoon that the Allied high comamnd accepted that this was a major attack. The fog persisted, but Dietrich's progress in the north remained slow, and US engineers blocked the SS battle groups' advance by blowing up bridges. However, Manteuffel's army quickly approached Bastogne, a vital center of communications.

Eisenhower agrede that Montgomery should take over the northern part of the salient and temporarily assume command of the US First Army and US Ninth Army; British troops were deployed to guard bridges over the Meuse River. Eisenhower ordered Patton to halt his eastward advance, but Patton had already anticipated this, swinging his army northward to strike the Germans in their southern flank. Simultaneously, the US 101st Airborne Division was rushed in by truck to reinfroce Bastogne, which was surrounded by the 5th Panzer Army.

End of the German offensive
By 22 December 1944, Dietrich's advance had been halted, and he was ordered to pass divisions to Manteuffel, whose spearheads were continuing to advance toward the Meuse. Two days later, they reached the Meuse at Dinant, but the Bastogne garrison still held out. The Germans faced growing resupply difficulties due to their failure to take Bastogne, and the skies began to clear, allowing for Allied airpower to be unleashed on the German forces. On 26 December, Patton's forces relieved Bastogne, and Manteuffel battled desperately to drive them back and retake the town. The momentum had gone, and the Germans were forced on the defensive. On the night of 31 December/1 January 1945, Hermann Balck's Army Group G launched Operation Nordwind, designed to destroy Allied forces in Alsace. The Allies were ready; Devers had withdrawn his 6th Army Group, but the French refused to give up the recently liberated Strasbourg. On New Year's Day, the Luftwaffe launched a major air assault against Allied airfields to destroy as many aircraft as possible, with 900 aircraft taking part in the offensive. They knocked out some 300 planes, but they lost the same number themselves, and many of their more experienced pilots were killed. Hitler realized that his offensive had failed, and he turned his attention to the east, where the Vistula-Oder Offensive was being mounted by the Red Army. Hitler's attack in the west had temporarily knocked the Allies off balance, but they had recovered quickly, and the Germans lost 80,000 men and much weaponry, losses they could ill afford. The offensive merely delayed the Allied advance, but it would not affect the inevitable final outcome of the war.

Advance to the Rhine
During January 1945, the Allies regained all the ground they had lost during the recent German offensive. Their main objective now was to get across the Rhine. In the middle of the month, Eisenhower issued his orders, targeting the Ruhr. The 21st Army Group under Montgomery was to cross the Rhine to its north, while Bradley's 12th Army Group did so to the south. They would then cut off the Ruhr. In the south, Devers' 6th Army Group would clear the Saarland and reduce the Colmar Pocket before advancing to the Rhine. No attempt would be made to liberate the northern Netherlands, resulting in the Dutch people coming close to starvation.

On the German side, the German commander-in-chief Gerd von Rundstedt wanted to withdraw his forces across the Rhine to conserve them for the defense of the Reich, but Hitler insisted that he hold the West Wall, the German equivalent of the Maginot Line. The Allies would face some very tough fighting ahead as a result of this strategy. The First and Third Armies continued to regain ground lost in December, while the US Seventh and French First Armies set about dealing with the eight German divisions in the Colmar Pocket. Montgomery set about his approach to the Rhine, and the first step was for the German salient in the Roermond area to be eradicated. On 16 January, the British launched Operation Blackcock, and they had to advance across muddy ground while facing heavy German resistance; it took ten days to clear the Roermond triangle.

West Wall campaign
On 28 January, the German Ardennes salient was finally eliminated, and the next task for the First and Third Armies was to penetrate the West Wall. Their first concern was the capture of the Roer River dams; if the Gemrans opened the sluices, the surrounding countryside would be flooded and would become a major obstacle. On 31 January, the Americans began their advance in Operation Queen, but they faced the same problems as the British. The Germans succeeded in flooding the whole Roer valley, and an advance toward the Rhine in the Cologne-Dusseldorf area had to be postponed until the waters subsided. On 5 February, however, the Colmar pocket was finally reduced, and the French and Americans closed up to the Rhine south of Strasbourg. The Seventh Army began to clear the Saarland, while the Third Army began to advance across the Moselle River.

The Canadians were then sent to clear the region stretching from the southeast of Nijmegen to the Lower Rhine between Emmerich and Wesel, launching Operation Veritable on 8 February 1945. 1,000 guns launched the largest artillery bombardment that the 21st Army Group had staged during the campaign, and the Canadians broke through teh initial German lines. They then came up against Eugen Meindl's German 1st Parachute Army, which consisted of hardened veterans, and the fighting became intense, especially in the wooded Reichswald area, where the Germans had constructed five lines of defenses. A further thaw caused much flooding and restricted the advance to a very narrow front, and assistance from the RAF Bomber Command could not prevent heavy Allied casualties.

Reaching the Rhine River
By 23 February, the floods in the Roer Valley had subsided sufficiently for the Americans to resume their advance. William Simpson's Ninth Army, which was under Montgomery's command, began to attack toward Dusseldorf. German troops had been drawn to the north to block the Canadians, so Simpson's forces were able to cross the Ruhr and advance farther toward the Rhine. One part turned northeast to link up with the Canadians, while the remainder continued toward Dusseldorf. Simultaneously, the First Army began to approach the Rhine between Cologne and Koblenz. Patton's spearheads reached the river at Neuwied on 7 March 1945, and the Third and Seventh Armies set about clearing the remainder of the German forces between the Moselle and Rhine.